


For the Discarded

by ThePraxianWeasleyGeek



Series: Christmas giftfics 2017 [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, [han solo voice] that's not how the force works, and I wanted to write iiiiiiit, i don't caaaaare, i had a cool ideaaaa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 22:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13133421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePraxianWeasleyGeek/pseuds/ThePraxianWeasleyGeek
Summary: On Jakku, they call her the Scavenger Queen.Snoke calls her 'the obstacle'.Kylo Ren doesn't know what to call her.





	For the Discarded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheNumberFour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNumberFour/gifts).



> Christmas giftfic time! Chess loves Reylo, ergo she gets my first-ever Reylo fic as her present! (I love reylo too, but not nearly as much as her). 
> 
> The idea timeline-wise here is that Rey still triggers her Force ability at around the same age, thanks to an unspecified event (that I'm too lazy to think up :p), and Starkiller takes a couple of years longer to build than in canon. Also, I guess the Resistance just never got that lead on Luke's map.

On Jakku, they call her the Scavenger Queen.

Snoke calls her ‘the obstacle’.

Kylo Ren doesn't know what to call her - what little is known about her does not lend itself to any one description. It is said that she grew up entirely alone, out in the wilds of a wild planet, and how could that have failed to shape her? The manifestation of her Force abilities was sudden and savage and untamed; nobody has heard her speak of what caused it, but Kylo and Snoke both felt its awakening: rending the tightly-woven fabric of the force like a solar storm, bright yet devastating; disoriented, undecided where the target of its fury lay, and so reaching out to everything at once.

It - she - reached for Kylo, and some small part of him has remained gripped ever since. He isn't foolish enough to think that this is destiny at play (she has not turned in his direction since, no matter how he strains for a glimpse of her closely-guarded den at the edge of the galaxy), but equally, he will not deny that he _wants_ to be pulled towards her. That one blinding flash of cacophonous, joyously unfettered power has not faded - she has a presence that seethes, and she sees no reason to restrain it, seemingly uncaring that such a decision causes her to shine like a beacon. Her presence is a great, glowing spot on the surface of her planet; she is to Jakku as a storm is to a gas giant.

Not that it matters if the First Order knows her location. They launched attacks on Snoke’s orders; orders to crack Jakku open, to draw the girl up from its innards, to present her to the Supreme Leader to be broken and molded into a battering ram of brutal Force.

Kylo would be concerned about his impending obsolescence, save that every assault mounted saw the few surviving craft limping back on broken wings.

The surviving pilots spoke of the planet itself resisting them: hails of rocks from the ground upwards, as though the girl held a swarm of asteroids at her command - and their own ships turned against them; felled TIE fighters patched back together and piloted by junkers and scavengers and dregs dressed in rags.

These are her subjects, apparently. The destitute and the cast-aside… but not, as far as Kylo can tell, anybody with particular drive to fight _back_ against their oppressors. There's no discernible link between the girl and the Resistance. She simply takes in the strays and shelters them from the hardships of the desert, and though she might well be harbouring the occasional rebel on her fortress of a planet, Kylo somehow doubts if she even knows. Or cares.

He's certain if his mother (or his uncle, for that matter - surely Luke felt it when she woke up, wherever he's sequestered himself) _had_ gotten to the girl by now, that the swirl of fierce Force energy on Jakku would have altered somehow; taken on a milder cadence.

It hasn't let up, yet, but each day runs the increased risk of someone from the Resistance managing to reach her.

One too many failed attacks, and Snoke changed tack. The new plan now depends on the capabilities of Armitage Hux, and his much-touted (by him) Starkiller Base. Jakku is to be its test run.

And Kylo finds he cannot make peace with that.

He harbours no true compassion, he tells himself, for the Scavenger Queen as a young woman defending her home - he does not know _her_ , only her presence - but he knows that presence well, by now, and will not see it wiped from the face of the galaxy. He knows her _power_ , has heard from the mouths of his own troops what it can accomplish.

He wants that power. He thinks, perhaps, that he can show her how to direct it, to use it to even more devastating effect.

Perhaps, he thinks, the work they could do together would be even greater than that which he has achieved beneath Snoke's thumb. She has yet to truly succumb to the Dark, so far as he can tell - there is nobody in her life whom she might seek to save, or protect, no attachments to influence her emotions. There is only Jakku, and her indifference for the place itself is writ large in the signature she scrawls with the Force. The Scavenger Queen hangs on a precipice, neither Light nor Dark but simply _waiting_ , indefinitely, for something inscrutable.

It's a strange path to tread, no doubt, but even with his own designs towards her, the choice… intrigues Kylo.

He is careful to conceal these thoughts from his master - but he thinks them just the same, and tries not to dwell too hard on _why_.

Eventually, there comes a turning point. Hux smarms his way into the latest meeting, talking about _projected results_ and _matter of weeks_ , and Kylo - ever impulsive, ever reckless - retrieves his shuttle and sets course for Jakku.

 

* * *

 

He keeps careful blocks in place as the Scavenger Queen’s maelstrom of an aura swallows him - its greedy tendrils reach even into low orbit, searching for threats that must be devoured and spat back out. Kylo passes silently beneath its scrutiny, and attracts no attention from curious eyes as he approaches the ground, having stopped off at another nearby junker planet (one of several - this end of the galaxy is where all unwanted things come to rest) before arriving, taking pains to artificially weather his ship. Some deliberately rough flying, a healthy coating of dust, and a few cautiously-applied scars on the plating from his saber, and he is just another piece of space debris, in a craft stolen from a station high above him.

It is not hard to locate her lair. The concentration of Force energy is his true north, and he hasn't journeyed too far before a strange, hulking mound of rock rises up on the horizon before him, the only solid thing in miles of shifting sand. A small spaceport has sprouted outside it, and all around the perimeter rise rickety shacks and grubby little hovels, like strange spores. Some clusters have crept upwards, to cling to the sides or the top of the vast mass of stone in the centre.

All this, in just a year and a half.

 _Only_ this, in over a year.

Kylo feels a rising tide of derision - her potential hums through the very air out here, like the electric promise in a live grenade. And this is what she has spent that promise on: a slum, and a pile of rocks.

 _Surely_ , once he reaches her, she will see how much more she could be.

(The tiniest sliver of him aches, for something that he never can be. Balance enough to carve out his own place in the world was never his birthright).

A few locals glance his way as his shuttle alights; by the time his boots touch the sand they have lost interest, and resumed a thrown-together gambling game. He makes for the great rock, half expecting to be seized, to find a knife at his throat and some aggrieved soul who lost out to a fleet of Stormtroopers glaring down the other end of it. But nobody recognises him - without the mask, he _is_ nobody.

Something slips in his head as he insists this to himself, and that chink in his defences is all the excuse her presence requires to come rushing through, breaching his mind like a sea wall. He anticipates shock, and a hasty retreat, perhaps alarm bells beginning to sound through the settlement; instead, she lingers, curiosity singing along the connection like a raw nerve. He yields to it - not completely, but far more than he had planned to only a second ago. Only once she has drunk her fill of his depths does she draw back, still with barely a whisper of a reaction.

Kylo, whose eyes have flickered shut at some point, decides that's as much of an invitation as he's going to get. He presses onward.

 

* * *

 

The rock, it transpires, is not one solid mass: venturing into a gash in its side, Kylo finds a strange, hollowed-out layer beneath the outer skin of stone, and another behind the inner wall of the first. The spaces are cramped, and poorly lit, but squashed into them are more lean-tos and huts, and more ragged-round-the-edges scavenger folk. Kylo ducks his head, and relies on the roughspun cloak draped over his usual attire to allow him inconspicuous passage between their ranks.

In the second cave he approaches the dividing wall, and runs a hand along its surface - dark, almost glassy rock, so clearly dug up from far below… and yet, not entirely flawless handiwork. A thick seam snakes up the stone from floor to ceiling. It's an unnatural-looking thing, marking the spot where something steadfast and inanimate, that ought to be impossible to fuse together, has been bent to a living creature’s will.

Clearly, this structure is a labour of much time and effort, if not love. And a monument to the stubbornly clueless, who refuse to know the rules of nature - or the rules of the Force.

There is a final opening on the opposite wall. Not bothering to hide a faint, wry smile, Kylo turns towards it.

The centremost cavern curves around the rusted corpse of an AT-AT - and the weight of rock forming its tomb conceals the fact that it is not even a century old. It might as well be a fossil she dredged up from the deepest layers of Jakku’s crust.

A series of clumsy, tinny clanking noises emanate from the beast’s stomach. Hearing these Kylo draws back, wary, retreating into the folds of shadow behind a hunchbacked stone jutting up from the sandy floor. There is a single hole in the ceiling, almost directly at its zenith; so far as he can tell the gap extends all the way to the outside, many metres above. The weakest stream of sunlight filters down from this point, drawing a line through the air exactly halfway between Kylo and the AT-AT.

The rest of the cave sits in a comfortable sort of gloom - which brightens, infinitesimally, to the accompaniment of metal creaking beyond Kylo's hiding place.

Three footsteps, that drag a little against the sand. Another soft _clink_. And that feral, relentless miasma of energy still buffeting him, yet now strangely inverted; as though he is standing near the eye of a storm, facing the winds on its very edge that surround the protected core.

“I know you're out there, you're not subtle. If you want to sneak up on me, try not to broadcast on all frequencies about where you're headed.”

Kylo curses himself mentally, because of course he now looks like a stumbling fool.

“I didn't _broadcast_ anything,” he grits out, still, on a matter of principle, refusing to reveal himself. “You shoved your way in and took what you pleased.”

“And you didn't seem _dis_ pleased enough to tell me to fuck off. Besides, I don't remember inviting you in here.”

He rolls his eyes - partly at himself for forgetting, amongst all his plans, that there's a reason he was never the diplomatic face of the First Order.

(Even if Hux only ever was the very flimsiest of faces).

“Are you going to keep sulking behind that rock, or are you going to at least let me see who's invaded my home?”

Kylo heaves a sigh, petty enough to want to continue refusing her, but aware that he's already damaged his first impression far more than he intended. He takes a single step, swinging himself out from behind the rock - and comes face to face with someone much less imposing than he expected.

She's like a stunted tree that sprouted by accident in the desert - skinny and short and wiry, haunted by the same lingering shadow of hunger that he saw in the eyes of her subjects. In the dim light, her clothes and skin and hair all blend into a similar hue. She is dust-coloured, with a dusting of freckles across her nose, and Kylo finds himself oddly satisfied that so much potent energy has been bestowed upon a grubby, unassuming sand rat. High time that someone without a heavy bloodline on their shoulders got a taste of the Force, and its maddening whims.

He can't resist giving a mocking bow of his head. “Your majesty.”

She pulls a distinctly un-regal face. “Call me that again, and I'll get somebody to throw you out.”

So she's allowing him to stay, for the moment. She doesn't, however, appear too eager to ask about all she must have seen in his head - or, perhaps, she _wants_ to appear indifferent. Not even bothering to meet his gaze, she turns and boosts herself up onto the slope of the rock that had been concealing Kylo.

The Scavenger Queen is holding a flimsy metal tray and a spoon, and instead of prolonging their conversation, she uses the spoon to start shovelling some sort of vaguely brown-coloured stew into her mouth. Kylo looks on in mild distaste, and she quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Nobody,” she informs him, around a mouthful of stew, “not even an emissary of the First Order, comes between me and food.” The girl pauses then, and considers. “ _Especially_ an emissary from the First Order. Your lot are mostly the reason we're short on food.”

“I'm not from the First Order.”

He doesn't even get a verbal response for that - just a withering, deadpan look.

“You've seen my mind. You know I'm here on my own initiative, not because of orders, or”-

“You could have been lying.”

Kylo snorts. “Inside my own head?”

“For all I know, yes.” The girl bites at the corner of her lip. “I’m not a Jedi. I know what this _is_ , inside me, but I don't have fancy techniques, or anything. Just brute… well… Force. I'm making it up as I go, and with how easily you let me in -” she turns towards Kylo now, glaring “- did you _really_ think I wouldn't suspect a trick?”

“There's no trick,” says Kylo, but she still squints suspiciously at him. Resisting the urge to growl in frustration, he tries again. “If you don't believe what you saw, why am I standing here?”

She hesitates, taking another spoonful of stew to avoid his gaze. After some overly prolonged chewing, she swallows, and finally speaks.

“... There aren't any other Force users on Jakku. Or any of the planets around it, or anywhere nearby. The closest ones I know of are you and…” The girl trails off, a different sort of haunted look taking up in her eye.

“My master.”

So, the air strikes weren't the only attacks Snoke had been launching. The Scavenger Queen has just risen considerably in Kylo's estimation - although, presumably, the Supreme Leader has long since given her up as a lost cause, she held out long enough for Snoke to draw that conclusion. For someone untrained, that's as impressive as it is mystifying.

“You fought him off,” Kylo says, unable to keep a note of awe out of his voice. “How?”

She only glares at him, diverting all attention to her meal again. Unwilling to take that as a dismissal, Kylo moves to stand in front of her - then crouches, slowly, coming to sit sprawled on the ground by her feet. The sackcloth cloak falls open, exposing a slash of black robes beneath… and the lightsaber at his hip.

Kylo hadn't intended for her to see it, worried that she'd take it as a threat; to his surprise, she glances up, eyes locked onto the weapon with a new kind of hunger swelling in their depths.

“I made it myself,” he offers lamely, unsure how to address her curiosity.

Her expression seems to sharpen, and she leans forwards. “How? What parts do you need? Does it have to be a sword? I'm used to fighting with a staff.”

The spoon hangs abandoned, halfway to her mouth. Kylo frowns in consideration, not wanting to screw things up while she's still willing to talk to him.

“I can tell you,” he says. “... If you tell _me_ how you kept Snoke out of your head.”

She looks like she wants to clam up again, but her eyes stray back to the lightsaber, and the line of her jaw becomes set.

“You won't tell him how,” she says, and though she clearly knows nothing of mind tricks, an edge of inexorability still creeps into her words. “Even if he tries to take it from you, you won't give it to him. I don't want him coming back.”

“Believe me, I sympathise.” Kylo neglects to mention why Snoke left in the first place - she is as jumpy as any other feral desert creature, and news of the Starkiller at this juncture would only serve to spook her.

Even without knowledge of the threat hanging over her, the girl struggles to begin. Her brow creases ever so slightly, and her eyes shift about as she presumably organises her thoughts. Kylo can guess the shape of them.

“What did he promise you?”

“What?”

“Snoke. He offered you something, didn't he? Something that only the Dark could provide, if you gave over to it.”

Unnerved, her gaze finally settles on the sand below her feet.

“I - my parents,” she whispers, blinking rapidly. “He said that the Dark could show me who my parents were.”

“And you wanted that?”

Her head immediately snaps up, and Kylo finds himself caught in a bewildered glare.

“You… What kind of a question is that?! Of course I did!”

“Then why not give in?”

He isn't entirely feigning this monotone indifference. Knowledge of who _his_ parents are has been a shackle dragging on his abilities ever since he first joined Snoke; the questions are almost genuine, and the detachment is, Kylo admits, to protect himself.

He doesn't remember, now, when that same voice first arrived in his head, but he does remember the point of surrender - the buildup, the trigger, the wreckage - and how much the supposed ease of giving into the Dark turned out to hurt.

The girl shudders faintly, as though she already possesses some inkling of the agony she would've had to submit to.

“... The reason I'm still here, on Jakku, is because this is where my parents left me. I was maybe four? Five? I don't remember. I just know that for them to find me again, I have to stay put. That's why I didn't leave even after all _this_ -” she gestures to her own body “- with the Force. I provide somewhere to stay that's sheltered from the elements, I try not to be a tyrant like Unkar Plutt, and I wait for… for _them_ to come back here.”

“To come back and claim you.”

She nods, her lips pressed together in a narrow line.

“But they might not.”

“I know.” The admission is barely audible.

So this is her secret: denial. Fear, usually one of the Dark’s dearest allies, has for once come to work against it - the scared, abandoned Scavenger Queen would rather live in perpetual limbo than face the likely harsh reality that her daydreams have shielded her from.

For some reason, Kylo is almost compelled to reach out to her; perhaps it is the part of him that recognises the disappointment born of absent parents. But her limbs have all drawn up and inwards, like a shrivelling vine, so instead, he searches for a subject change.

“Is there some secret to how you built your… castle, too?”

He's almost prepared for that to dredge up something else - to his relief she shakes her head, unfurling slightly. “That's just… me. It's about all I _can_ do with the Force, honestly - stone is easy. It's all there is on this planet besides sand, and sand begins as stone, so I've known it pretty much my whole life.”

Kylo nods. “I could show you how to do more, you know.”

“You could. And you owe me a lightsaber. But I can't trust you.”

A mad idea takes root in the corner of his mind. It may not even work, but he can tell he's on the verge of being dismissed - and he will _not_ let her slip away, after all he has seen within her.

“Would you trust a pledge of fealty?”

She balks. “A what?”

“A temporary one,” Kylo hastens to add. “They call you the Scavenger Queen - and queens can have advisors. _Loyal_ ones. If you let me stay here a while, I can teach you what I know -”

“Of the Dark?”

“Of the _Force_. I was a Jedi padawan, once.” The girl blinks at that, clearly taken aback, and Kylo dares to think he may have succeeded.

The Scavenger Queen tilts her head. “You're not to contact… _him_ at all. Or anyone else from the First Order. And no Dark Side tricks…” a pause. “At least, not until I decide I'm ready.”

Kylo scrambles somewhat hurriedly up from his sprawl, only to slowly take a knee before her.

He can't resist, however, adding a rather insubordinate tilt of his head; nor can he prevent the faint smirk that creeps over his face.

“As you will it… your majesty.”


End file.
